Residual Magic and Heighten Spell

[NoHotDogBuns]

Ive been building a fairly standard killer gnome and i'm a few levels away from having to (maybe) worry about shadow Miracles. In their handbook on shadowcraft mages NineInchNall notes that Residual Magic does not track to what level a Highten Metamagic was used and as such one can use Shadow Illusion (at as low as cantrip level) to mimic Miracle provided they used Highten (to any extent) on a Silent Image. Later in the guide they describe using a fairly simple loop enabled by shadow Miracle to gain an arbitrary amount of spell slots through Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer. This interpretation of Residual Magic interaction with Highten Metamagic and the consequences from it seem... a little sus to me. Still i cant quite put my finger on why this doesn't work and i figured sense i'm a bit new to this i should post it to the threads and check what the accepted reading of these two feats is.

[Rebel7284]

The relevant text is


you can apply any one of the metamagic effects from the first casting to the second casting, but without any change to the spell's level.


1. I can totally see the reading of "Heighten spell was an effect AND it says it doesn't change the spell level, so might as well Heighten all the way"

2. I feel that many DMs would rule that the "metamagic effect" is not just the heighten feat but also the magnitude of the change. After all, it doesn't say to apply the same feats, but the same effect, and the full effect was, say, "Heightened by 3"

With that said, metamagic effect is not fully defined and I am fairly certain that the designers of Residual Magic never considered this scenario (or they would have clarified it.) In my personal opinion, reading #2 is more balanced.

[TalonOfAnathrax]

AFAIK it works just fine.
Of course, just because it works doesn't mean it's an appropriate level of power for your table.

And in my experience, by the level at which you get it shadow miracles aren't that broken. It's definitely very high-op, but the dual saves and requirement that every other spell be a low-level illusion allow other PCs (well, other Tier 1 or 2 PCs) to keep up or even overshadow you.
On the other hand, getting infinite low-level spell slots is fairly broken when you can turn them into Miracles. Sure in combat it's not that amazing (your action economy is fairly poor because every other spell has to be very low level) but out of combat it just gives you absolutely insane utility.

IMO the real problem is the Gnome wizard substitution level infinite spells loop (I'd never dare do that at a table), not the Residual Magic shadow miracles at level 9 (which is simply very high-OP and not acceptable for most parties).

[NoHotDogBuns]

Thanks for the help! As for power i think anything short of Ice Assasining divine ranks and pun pun is welcome. I will check if infinite spells is ok with the table though.